My level 77 Summoner Build! Duel Totem Duel Curse!

Hello now that I am level 77 I figured I would write a small guide in hopes that others could see what I have been up to. I have also spent countless regrets and if I can save people a few bucks here and there I feel like I am doing my part. Now I will be the first to admit that I do not often write guilds so excuse me if this ends up being a bit loose. I will try and update with questions and answers to tighten everything up.

First my gear that allows me to play the way I like.



Quick important item breakdowns.

At first I couldn't see where anyone would want this item. First Being a Battery Character this was taking away my beautiful hit points. I already have monsters that are doing this I don't want my weapon to do the same! After some consideration I took the plunge and I am happy I did. While yes you do end up loosing 30% of your hps you more than make up for this with your shield and being able to sub out purity with vitality (more on this a little further down)

The only reason to take these boots are the +1 to spectres and zombies. Lets face it the + to life and mana is minimum at best. That Said this is a summoner build and these two are your meat and potatoes.

The +2 to minions found in this helm is what makes it amazing. The +life is what kicks it into high gear!

Simple 5 L with okay stats. This piece is for your spectres with minion damage,GMP, being the important ones. Some people take extra life and maybe it is better early on but once you are higher up honestly I could not justify taking it. To be honest my Spectres die so rarely that it did not seem to matter at all. I also took Added Chaos damage and added rarity. I have faster casting gem that is leveled up to 17, but I would much rather have the shot of getting loot than faster casting. Faster casting also only works on certain mobs so I did not want to have to choose oh Ill take you or I wont take you.

Second I would like to present my build.






Obviously with this being a summoner build I have taken all of the summoner nodes so I will focus on some of the other main nodes and try to explain why I took these.

Eldritch Battery The reason why I took this node is pretty straight forward. I need the mana to run as many auras as I do. I run Wrath,Vitality,Grace,Haste,Discipline.

Really quick reasons for why I run these.

Wrath: The mana cost is very low and it adds a decent amount of damage I believe this also gives my minions a chance to shock, but for the most part I use it for the extra bit of damage.

Discipline: Energy shield for your team extra mana for you!

Vitality: I didn't start using this until late game (after I got my Midnight Bargain) Because I was running purity at all times. My zombies currently have 16k hitpoints this means my zombies are healing roughly 208 hps a second. Now because we cannot see our spectres health we have to resort to math. 74 seconds around me is a complete heal drop your rejuvenation totem and that number goes down even further.

Grace: At current level this provides 10% percent evasion and seeing how there is no way to tell what this does to our minions I am going to venture a guess that it provides the same to them. This however is not the main reason why I picked this Gem up. Simply put between all of the other "Defense Skills" this was the cheapest to run mana wise. And since I am running 3 40% manas already (29% with reduced mana) this seemed like the best option.

Haste: This is a flat DPS increase for your entire team and also a +movement speed. Faster casting + Faster attacks + movement speed is winning in my book!


I see plenty of people suggest Clarity but to be honest the mana reserve is just so damn high. That said I natually regen 60 mana a second anyway and once I am up and running I do not cast often.

Next Major Node Duel Curse: 7 points is a boat load of points do not let anyone tell you other wise. I wrestled with this like you would not believe I easily spent a good 14 regrets specking into then out of then into again. My breaking point was this my mana is already very low 400 after all buffs and reservations are taken into account. I could use arc and but at most this is going to only jump to 4 monsters and only has a chance to debuff them. The horde blows though stuff so fast and your little bit of damage is not going to make a world of difference. I would much rather bet on a sure thing rather than a chance.

The two curses I use are:
Elemental Weakness: This buff is for our spectres that are in the back hitting with ice/fire/lightning whatever. This also helps with minion instability. The reason I use this blanket (All elements) is because in the heat of battle I dont want to have to look at the corpses and say oh well I can't have you becasue you are lighning and not fire. So this blanket curse helps with that greatly!
Vulnerability: This is for our zombies and skeletons

Next Major Node is Minion Instability: This skill is fantastic! 16k hp zombies aoe explode for 5,280 fire damage while the skeletons who are currently at 5k hps explode for 1,650. While those numbers may seem small think of it like this only looking at the skeletons because to be honest 16k hps zombies do not die very often. 1,650 x 14 is 23,100 damage aoe in a small room. When I place my summon skeleton totem in a room it is the same as tossing in a grenade. There is also something very tranquile about hearing the pop pop pop of your skeletons knowing that those baddies are taking massive damage.

Now on to what is going to possibly be the biggest point of contention with this build.
Double Totem: I have seen many people discount double totem and for a long time I did too. Yes it burns up a large amount of points but as you can see from the build not one point is wasted in getting to duel totems. I feel as if it is 4 points very well spent. Some argue I do not have any +elemental damage so why would I take something that is going to be doing so little damage. When looking at it like this yes that is a hard fact to argue. Instead lets flip this around to. Okay between cursing everything on the map and summoing skeleton totem what else is there for me to do besides look at all the pretty loot that is dropping. I still feel as if I could be doing more. Then it dropped for me Rejuvenation totem! A quick look at the wiki to see what this thing would be like after a few levels and I realized this thing is fantastic! Currently the totem is healing 98.4 Life a Second. Combine this with vitality and my hp/s hovers around 143. To give you a realistic idea of what this is like I stand in the flame golem trails or on patches of burning ground and take zero damage. Now taking the extra totem means we can no longer cast damaging spells which is fine because we do not cast anyway. We can still cast our duel curses as well as traps. The trap that I find the most useful is conversion trap coupled with increased duration. Toss a couple of these bad boys out into the world and add up to 3 extra members to your team. I will usually throw one on the ground as this will stop golems from rolling over you and will make whatever flicker striker that just attacked you go attack his own team.

Those are most of the major nodes that were important to me for this build. I see where others will take the resistance nodes below Inner Force and below the health nodes on the right hand side, but for me I got much more benefit out of getting the shield node while on my way down to totems.


There is a fantastic write up on thread: This explains very well what spectres to take with you into battle. I suggest reading his post as well to know fully what is going on. Here is a small snip-it

"

blacksheepnz wrote:

Chapters:
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1.2: My Spectres Tier List (Click on the link to view what they look like)

Note: Didn't add monsters that granted auras/charges also flicker strike monsters. Will try to find the wiki page, very strong with parties.

Monster name - Map Area - Level (Might not have levels.) - Damage Type

Gold Tier:
Act 3 Monsters:

Carrion Queen - Sarn Slums - Fire
-Projectile Explodes doing small AOE.

Flame Sentinel - Solaris Temple - level 3 - Fire
-Already have Lesser Multiply Projectile and fork.
-Hover so they don't take burn damage from the ground.

Tentacle Miscreation - Lunaris - level 2-3 - Fire
-Fast attack speed.
-High Projectile Capability.(Fire from 2 hands)

Undying Alchemists - Sewers Aqueduct - Poision
-High Mobility.
-Throws poison bombs that explode.
-Fast attack speed.

Act 2 Monsters:

Ancient Construct - Waterfall Cave - level 2 - Chaos
-Use Chaos damage.
-Some have add additional projectile.
-Moderate attack speed.

Act 1 Monsters:

-Have yet to find anything worthy.

Silver Tier:
Act 3 Monsters:

Blackguard Arcmage - Barracks - Lighting - Casts Arc
Burning Miscreations - Lunaris - Fire - Casts Unrighteous Fire
Voidbearers - Docks - Fire

Act 2 Monsters:

Vaal Constructs - Vaal Ruins - Level 1 - Chaos

Act 1 Monsters:

-Have yet to find anything worthy.

Bronze:
Every other mob i haven't mentioned.

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This build works for me and after playing it for the past 77 levels I can without a double say it works very well. Currently I am coloring in the health nodes and picking up other utilites such as leadership whenever I can. I would love your feed back there are a million different summoner builds out there I wanted to post what was working for me. Feel free to post your questions comments and concerns. I will try to answer them in a timely fashion.

"

My zombies currently have 16k hitpoints this means my zombies are healing roughly 2k hps a second

16000 * 1.3 / 100 = 208.

It was great read. I am also running a summon witch (lvl 72). I use Arc as a main spell to add shock state and a little damage (600 DPS). I invested the life ring around Templar starting point. I would consider to have double totem because it sounds fantastic.

Thanks!1

Fixed the math mistake thanks!

I would love to get a few comments on my build Good Bad or Ugly.

im 60 and im going something like this and it was pretty easy until act 3 merciless, im having some issues although i think its my gear since ive not upgraded it for like 20 lvls! lol. its a very nice build and i recommend it

Good read, sounds interesting.

Altho I would like to see ur build in little steps.

Like lvl 1-20, 20-40, etc

Also early gameplay tips would be nice :)

Need a brake down of when you moved into dual totem and so on :)(

Dual. You are not squaring the Totems off against the Curses.